How to read Asiatic characters (Japanese, Chinese) after json_encode in PHP

[buttercup]

I've read every post about the topic but I don't think I've found a reply to my question, that's driving me crazy.I got a couple of php files, one stores data into mySQL db, another one read those data: I get data from all over the world and it seems that I succeed to store asiatic character in a right way, but when I try to read those data I can't get those characters back.As many other users I got ?? instead of the correct chars. Top of my PHP files I got:\[code\]header('Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8');\[/code\] then\[code\]mysql_query("SET CHARACTER SET utf8", $link);mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8'", $link);\[/code\] then\[code\]$fab[] = array_map(utf8_encode,$array);\[/code\]Here if I \[code\]print_r ($fab)\[/code\] I lost asiatic chars :-(Then when I do:\[code\]$json_string = json_encode($fab); //originale\[/code\]What I get is \[code\]"??"\[/code\].How is the correct way to get the right chars back? The json string is then passedto an iPhone client.Any suggestion or help would be sooo appreciated.Thank you anyway,Fabrizio